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    Give Me a Break
    Give Me a Break
    Give Me a Break
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    Give Me a Break

    Written by John Stossel

    Narrated by John Stossel

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Ballooning government? Millionaire welfare queens? Tort lawyers run amok? A $330,000 outhouse, paid for with your tax dollars? John Stossel says, ""Give me a break.""

    When he hit the airwaves thirty years ago, Stossel chased snake-oil peddlers, rip-off artists, and corporate thieves, winning the applause of his peers.

    But along the way, he noticed that there was something far more troublesome going on: While the networks screamed about the dangers of coffee pots, worse risks were ignored.

    In Give Me a Break, Stossel explains how ambitious bureaucrats, intellectually lazy reporters, and greedy lawyers make your life worse even as they claim to protect your interests. Taking on such sacred cows as the FDA, the War on Drugs, and scare-mongering environmental activists -- and backing up his trademark irreverence with careful reasoning and research -- he shows how the problems that government tries and fails to fix can be solved better by the extraordinary power of the free market.

    He traces his journey from cub reporter to 20/20 co-anchor, revealing his battles to get his ideas to the public, his struggle to overcome stuttering, and his eventual realization that, for years, much of his reporting missed the point.

    Stossel concludes the book with a modest proposal for change. It's a simple plan in the spirit of the Founding Fathers to ensure that America remains a place ""where free minds -- and free markets -- make good things happen.""

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateSep 30, 2005
    ISBN9780060856052
    Give Me a Break
    Author

    John Stossel

    New York Times bestselling author John Stossel hosts his own one-hour weekly Fox Business Network show, called Stossel, and a series of one-hour specials on Fox News. He also appears regularly on The O’Reilly Factor and on other Fox News shows. During three decades in journalism, Stossel has received numerous honors and awards. He is a nineteen-time Emmy winner and a five-time honoree for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club.

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    Reviews for Give Me a Break

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    • 3/5
      Overall, an OK book. I certainly felt somewhat more enlightened after reading it, particularly in regards to the media's oversensationalization of reporting safety "hazards" and government overregulation. Minus points for typos (seriously, should have been fixed by the paperback printing), and minus one star for his overgeneralized hatred of unions. Also, I have concerns about his love of contracting out government services to for-profit corporations. He only presents the evidence that supports his viewpoint here and fails to mention episodes like the Accenture voting system debacle currently going on in Wisconsin. However, no matter what your take on his opinions, it makes a good conversation starter, but a more balanced view would have been better.
    • 5/5
      A fresh view into the relation between government, business and people. Makes you think and rethink of what we were thinking obvious.
    • 3/5
      tossel is great and unique. Check out his website. He is from the opposite economic spectrum from Krugman, readily quoting Milton Friedman and Frederick Von Hayek. His book is about journalism, and so many of the myths we believe in because of bad journalism and good lawyers. Here are some of Stossel's "truths": Large amounts of vitamin C don't help fight off any diseases, silicone breast implants never were harmful, there's no such thing as a "crack baby," and cutting your salt intake won't help prevent heart disease. Those are all covered in just 10 pages in the book. This book is an eye-opening, mind-freeing must-read. You may not agree with him, but you'll have to know your facts well to disagree with Stossel. This book stirred long-dormant Libertarian feelings in my soul.
    • 4/5
      This is a quick read. I enjoyed Stossel's conversational tone and his no-nonsense way of addressing the issues. And in general I agree that government needs to shrink, lawsuits need to be reduced, and there's no virtue in being a victim. His anecdotes were a mixture of humorous and maddening, as most stories of government stupidity are. Unfortunately, I don't see this book as convincing anyone with firmer beliefs than the most tenuous of fence-sitters. As a reporter, Stossel knows how to break down complex issues into bite-sized chunks. Unfortunately, that means his evidence is a collection of soundbites from interviews rather than papers and studies you can go look up yourself. Interviews are a good source of information, but I am always wary of nonfiction books lacking a bibliography or at least a "further reading" section.
    • 4/5
      This book makes you think twice before listening to anyone telling you they have a deal for you.